I have a simple code in Entity Framework (EF) v4.1 code first:
PasmISOContext db = new PasmISOContext();
var user = new User();
user.CreationDate = DateTime.Now;
user.LastActivityDate = DateTime.Now;
user.LastLoginDate = DateTime.Now;
db.Users.Add(user);
db.SaveChanges();
user.Avatar = new Avatar() { Link = new Uri("http://myUrl/%2E%2E/%2E%2E") };
db.SaveChanges();
db.Users.Add(new User() { Avatar = new Avatar() { Link = new Uri("http://myUrl/%2E%2E/%2E%2E") } });
db.SaveChanges();
The problem is that I get an error
An error occurred while saving entities that do not expose foreign key
properties for their relationships. The EntityEntries property will
return null because a single entity cannot be identified as the source
of the exception. Handling of exceptions while saving can be made
easier by exposing foreign key properties in your entity types. See
the InnerException for details.
at
db.Users.Add(new User() { Avatar = new Avatar() { Link = new Uri("http://myUrl/%2E%2E/%2E%2E") } });
db.SaveChanges();
I don't understand why the similar operation works. Is there something wrong with my model, or with ef-code-first?
public class Avatar
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
[Required]
public string LinkInString { get; set; }
[NotMapped]
public Uri Link
{
get { return new Uri(LinkInString); }
set { LinkInString = value.AbsoluteUri; }
}
}
public class User
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string UserName { get; set; }
public string Email { get; set; }
public string Password { get; set; }
public Avatar Avatar { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Question> Questions { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Achievement> Achievements { get; set; }
public DateTime CreationDate { get; set; }
public DateTime LastLoginDate { get; set; }
public DateTime LastActivityDate { get; set; }
}
For those of you who would still have this error with all keys properly defined, have a look at your entities and make sure you don't leave a datetime field with a null value.
This error message can be thrown for any kind of reason. The 'InnerException' property (or its InnerException, or the InnerException of that, etc) contains the actual primary cause of the problem.
It would of course be useful to know something about where the problem occurred - which object(s) in the unit of work is causing the problem? The exception message would normally tell you in the 'EntityEntries' property, but in this case, for some reason, that can't be done. This diagnostic complication - of the 'EntityEntries' property being empty - is apparently because some Entities 'do not expose foreign key properties for their relationships.'
Even if the OP gets the error because of failing to initialize DateTimes for the second instance of User, they get the diagnostic complication - 'EntityEntries' being empty, and a confusing top-level message ... because one of their Entity's doesn't 'expose foreign key properties'. To fix this, Avatar should have a public virtual ICollection<User> Users { get; set; } property defined.
The issue was resolved by adding an FK property.
In my case the following situation was giving me the same Exception:
Imagine a code first EF model where you have a Garage entity that has a collection of Car entities. I needed to remove a car from the garage so I ended up with code that looked like this:
garageEntity.Cars.Remove(carEntity);
Instead, it should've been looked like this:
context.Cars.Remove(carEntity);
Just for others who might have similar problems. I had the same error, but for a different reason. In one of the child objects I defined the [Key] as being a value which was the same for different saves. A stupid mistake on my part, but the error message does not instantly lead you to the problem.
In my case the exeception was thrown because EF had created a migration incorrectly.
It missed setting the identity: true on the second table. So go into the migrations which created the relevant tables and check if it missed to add identity.
CreateTable(
"dbo.LogEmailAddressStats",
c => new
{
Id = c.Int(nullable: false, identity: true),
EmailAddress = c.String(),
})
.PrimaryKey(t => t.Id);
CreateTable(
"dbo.LogEmailAddressStatsFails",
c => new
{
Id = c.Int(nullable: false), // EF missed to set identity: true!!
Timestamp = c.DateTime(nullable: false),
})
.PrimaryKey(t => t.Id)
.ForeignKey("dbo.LogEmailAddressStats", t => t.Id)
.Index(t => t.Id);
An Id column should have identity (i.e. auto-incrementing!) so this must be a EF bug.
You could add identity manually with SQL directly to the database but I prefer using Entity Framework.
If you run in to the same problem I see two easy solutions:
Alt 1
reverse the incorrectly created migration with
update-database -target:{insert the name of the previous migration}
Then add the identity: true manually to the migration code and then update-database again.
Alt 2
you create a new migration that adds identity. If you have no changes in the models and you run
add-migration identity_fix
it will create an empty migration. Then just add this
public partial class identity_fix : DbMigration
{
public override void Up()
{
AlterColumn("dbo.LogEmailAddressStatsFails", "Id", c => c.Int(nullable: false, identity: true));
}
public override void Down()
{
AlterColumn("dbo.LogEmailAddressStatsFails", "Id", c => c.Int(nullable: false));
}
}
This problem can also arise from reversed key declarations. If you're using fluent to configure the relationship, make sure the left and right keys are mapped to the correct entity.
I hade same probleme. in my case, it was due to datetime field with a null value. I had to passe a value to datetime and evrythings went fine
Another answer:
I used this:
public List<EdiSegment> EdiSegments { get; set; }
instead of this:
public virtual ICollection<EdiSegment> EdiSegments { get; set; }
and got the error message noted above.
I had the same error and in my case the problem was that I added a relationship object which had already been loaded "AsNoTracking". I had to reload the relation property.
BTW, Some suggest using "Attach" for relations that already exist in db, I haven't tried that option though.
In my case, the problem was that I renamed a column improperly, so the migration made two columns, one called "TeamId" and one called "TeamID". C# cares, SQL doesn't.
Yet another different case here.
A query was cast to a list and while doing that, it created entities by their constructor for comparison in the linq expression right after the ToList(). This created entities that gotten into the deleted state after the linq expression finished.
However! There was a small adjustment that created another entity in the constructor, so that this new entity got linked to an entity that was marked as Deleted.
Some code to illustrate:
query.Except(_context.MyEntitySetSet()
.Include(b => b.SomeEntity)
.Where(p => Condition)
.ToList() // This right here calls the constructor for the remaining entities after the where
.Where(p => p.Collection.First(b => Condition).Value == 0)
.ToList();
The constructor of MyEntity:
public partial class MyEntity
{
protected MyEntity()
{
// This makes the entities connected though, this instance of MyEntity will be deleted afterwards, the instance of MyEntityResult will not.
MyEntityResult = new MyEntityResult(this);
}
}
My solution was to make sure the entire expression was done inside the IQueryable so that there won't be any objects created.
I'm not entirely sure that it's going to help in your case because I'm setting up my tables using Fluent API, however, as far I can tell, the issue arises regardless whether the schema is set up using data annotations (attributes) or Fluent API (configuration).
There seems to be a bug in EF (v. 6.1.3) as it omits certain changes to the schema when updating the DB to the next migration. The quickest route around it is (during the development stage) to remove all the tables from the DB and runt migrations from init stage again.
If you're already in production, the quickest solution I've found was to manually change the schema in the DB or, if you want to have version control of the changes, manually manipulate the methods Up() and Down() in your migration.
Today I faced this issue and tried the possible solutions posted above but none of them helped me. I had UnitOfWork pattern implemented and system was committing the data in last after adding all the records.
In my case system was combining the two models and querying the DB
Invalid object name 'dbo.RoleModelUserModel'.
where these were two different models actually.
I fixed this by reordering the insert statements and adding the parent entity first. In this case added the user first and issue resolved.
After a bit of investigation I found that whilst .Net supports a minimum date (DateTime.MinValue) of 01/01/0001 00:00:00 and a maximum (DateTime.MaxValue) of 31/12/9999 23:59:59 in SQL Server Compact Edition minimum date is 01/01/1753 00:00:00.
When I entered a date greater than 01/01/1753 00:00:00, this error disappeared.
Is your application or website being accessed from some third party application when this error is coming? If yes, then please check the access rights of the account which is sending the request to your application.
In our case, it was ServiceNow MID server service which was the culprit. It is a Windows service. If you want to know more about it then please read this link. So basically, you need to check two things:
Under the context of which account the calling service should run to access your application?
What all access rights are needed for the service's log on account to do all allowed operations in your application?
As per this article of ServiceNow we had to give Log on as a service right to the MID Server service's log on account. You can do it via in Local Security Policies console (Refer screenshot).
After we gave the proper access rights to the logon account, the Entity Framework issue went away. Please remember that the access rights and the log on account to be used will be specific to your application.
I'm facing a problem using EF.
I have the following situation:
From this database schema i'd like to generate the following entity by merge tables data:
// Purchases
public class Purchase
{
//Fields related to Purchases
public int IdPurchase { get; set; }
public string CodPurchase { get; set; }
public int IdCustomer { get; set; }
public decimal Total { get; set; }
//Fields related to Customers table
public string CodCustomer { get; protected set; }
public string CompanyTitle { get; protected set; }
public string CodType { get; protected set; }
//Fields related to CustomersType table
public string DescrType { get; protected set; }
}
As you can see, in my context i don't want 3 separated entities for each table. I want a single one with the fields related to all tables. All fields of Customers and CustomersType tables must be readonly (so i've set the relative setters protected) and the others must be editables so that EF can track changes. In particular, i'd like to have the ability to change the "IdCustomer" field and let EF to automatically update "CodCustomer", "CompanyTitle", "DescrType"....and so on by doing cross table select.
To do that, i wrote this configuration class:
internal class PurchaseConfiguration : EntityTypeConfiguration<Purchase>
{
public PurchaseConfiguration(string schema = "dbo")
{
ToTable(schema + ".Purchases");
HasKey(x => x.IdPurchase);
Property(x => x.IdPurchase).HasColumnName("IdPurchase").IsRequired().HasDatabaseGeneratedOption(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity);
Property(x => x.IdCustomer).HasColumnName("IdCustomer").IsRequired();
Property(x => x.Total).HasColumnName("Total").IsRequired().HasPrecision(19, 4);
Map(mc =>
{
mc.Properties(n => new
{
n.CodCustomer,
n.CompanyTitle,
n.CodType
});
mc.ToTable("Customers");
});
Map(mc =>
{
mc.Properties(n => new
{
n.DescrType,
});
mc.ToTable("CustomersType");
});
}
}
I've tested it but it doesn't work as expected. I always get this message:
Properties for type 'Purchase' can only be mapped once. The non-key
property 'CodCustomer' is mapped more than once. Ensure the
Properties method specifies each non-key property only once.
Maybe there's something wrong or i forget something (for example the join fields of Map<> that i don't know where to specify them).
How can i accomplish in the correct way this task?
I don't want to have "Customers" and "CustomersType" DBSets in my context.
Is there a way to avoid it?
I even thought to add into the "IdCustomer" setter a custom query to update manually "Customers" and "CustomersType" related fields, but i don't want to do that for 2 reasons:
I don't have any DbConnection avaiable into the "Purchases" class, so i can't create a DbCommand to read data from DB.
I want entity class to be persistent-ignorant
EF seems to be a powerfull tool that can do these sort of things and i don't want to reinvent the wheel by writing custom procedures.
I've uploaded the example C# source and the tables CREATE scripts (MS SQLServer) here.
All entities are autogenerated by the "EF reverse POCO generator" T4 template (the T4 template is disabled, to activate it set CustomTool = TextTemplatingFileGenerator).
Do not forget to update the ConnectionString in the app.config.
Thanks in advance.
Not the right mapping
I'm afraid the bad news is that this mapping is not possible with this table structure. What you're trying to achieve here is known as entity splitting. However, entity splitting requires 1:1 associations, because sets of records in the involved tables represent one entity. With this mapping, you can't have a Customer belonging to more than one Purchase. That would mean that you could modify multiple Purchase entities by modifying a Customer property of only one of them.
Maybe the news isn't that bad, because I think you actually want to have 1-n associations. But then you can't have these "flattened" properties in Purchase.
As an alternative you could create delegated properties like so:
public string CodCustomer
{
get { return this.Customer.CodCustomer; }
set { this.Customer.CodCustomer = value; }
}
You'd have to Include() Customers and CustomersTypes when you fetch Purchases.
Another alternative is to use a tool like AutoMapper to map Purchase to a DTO type having the flattened properties.
But what does the exception tell me?
You map the Purchase entity to the Purchases table. But you don't specify which properties you want to map to this table. So EF assumes that all properties should be mapped to it. So that's the first (implicit) mapping of CodCustomer. The second one is the one in the mc.ToTable statement. (EF only reports the first problem.)
To fix this, you should add a mapping statement for the left-over Purchase properties:
Map(mc =>
{
mc.Properties(n => new
{
n.IdPurchase,
n.CodPurchase,
n.IdCustomer,
n.Total,
});
mc.ToTable("Purchases");
});
By the way, you should also remove the mapping configuration classes of Customer and CustomersType, they're redundant.
But, as said, the database schema doesn't match the required structure. If you try to save a Purchase you will get a foreign key constraint exception. This is because EF expects the following table structure:
Where the columns IdPurchase in Customer and CustomersType are both primary key and foreign key to Purchase. I don't think this is what you had in mind when designing the database.
There are a few questions out there on this topic, but my question is very specific to true self referencing. All the examples for other questions are circular references and that doesn't help me in this case.
Lets say I have this model:
public class User
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
...
public int CreatedByUserId { get; set; }
}
and this map:
public class UserMap : EntityTypeConfiguration<User>
{
public UserMap()
{
this.HasRequired(a => a.CreatedByUser)
.WithMany()
.HasForeignKey(u => u.CreatedByUserId);
}
}
After migrations generates a database with this code I can manually add a User in SQL Management Studio with Id = 1, and CreatedByUserId = 1 so that tells me that self references like this can work.
However when using EF to create a user, I run into a "unable to determine a valid ordering for dependent operations" issue. There are a lot of questions on the matter that involve a new entity that refers another new entity that has a foreign key on the first entity, which is a circular reference. The solution in those cases is either save one of entities first or to have a nullable id on the circular entity foreign key. I can not do either of those because the first would be impossible and the second is a external constraint that I cannot have nullable ids.
So, seeing how I can achieve this by adding a entry manually I can assume it's a limitation of EF5. What are the work arounds?
You can still satisfy your interface and do the save first then set method by adding another property to act as a nullable backer for CreatedByUserId:
public class User : ICreatable
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
...
public int CreatedByUserId
{
get
{
if (!_CreatedByUserId.HasValue)
//throw new exception, something went wrong.
return _CreatedByUserId;
}
set
{
_CreatedByUserId = value;
}
}
int? _CreatedByUserId { get; set; }
}
You may want to rethink the possibility that a user can create him or herself...
However if you really want to do this then there is a solution. Your main problem is the fact that your column is an IDENTITY column which means that EF doesn't specify the Id, SQL server is giving each row an auto-incrementing Id. Any value you set as the Id is ignored. You don't necessarily know when executing the INSERT what the next Id is going to be so you can't create a reference to a row that doesn't exist yet.
Change your mapping code to something like the following:
this.Property(x => x.Id)
.HasDatabaseGeneratedOption(DatabaseGeneratedOption.None);
this.HasRequired(x => x.CreatedByUser)
.WithMany();
You don't need to specify the foreign key if the name pattern matches (eg. CreatedByUser and CreatedByUserId).
Now when you insert a User you can specify the Id and the CreatedById. Although note that you must now always specify the Id to insert a new User. This is common practice if you are using GUIDs as Ids because you can just generate a new GUID without having to first query for the next "available" Id before creating a new object.
I am using Fluent NHibernate 1.2 for NHibernate 3.1. I have a class:
public class Marks
{
public virtual int Id { get; set; }
public virtual IList<string> Answers { get; set; }
}
In the mapping for the Marks class, I have:
HasMany(m => m.Answers).Element("Value");
When the tables are created, an "Answers" table get created with the following columns:
Marks_id (FK, int, not null)
Value (nvarchar(255), null)
What I would like to do is have the Value be nvarchar(max). I'd prefer not doing this for every string in every class, just for this one class.
I have looked at these posts: first, second, third, but haven't found anything yet that helps.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. If you need additional information, please let me know.
Edit:
This is the code that resolves the issue:
HasMany(x => x.Answers).Element("Value", x => x.Columns.Single().Length = 4001);
You can force mapping string to longer column at each column level in mapping either by using CustomSqlType("nvarchar(max)") or, bit more universally, by setting Length(4001) (SQL Server magic number, above which it creates nvarchar(max) automatically).
To apply it automatically for all string columns in your entities, you can write your own FluentNHibernate convention:
public class LongStringConvention : IPropertyConvention, IPropertyConventionAcceptance
{
public void Accept(IAcceptanceCriteria<IPropertyInspector> criteria)
{
criteria.Expect(x => x.Type == typeof(string));
}
public void Apply(IPropertyInstance instance)
{
instance.Length(4001);
}
}
And register it in mapping container i.e. like that:
Fluently.Configure()
.Mappings(...)
.Conventions.Add<LongStringConvention>()
To apply it for collection of strings, you can use custom element mappings:
HasMany(x => x.Answers).Element("Value", x => x.Columns.Single().Length = 4001);
Came across this issue myself and the above answers were most helpful in pointing me in the right direction...but I'm using a slightly newer version of FluentNH.
For Fluent NHibernate 1.3 and NH 3.3.1, the correct code is:
HasMany(x => x.Answers).Element("Value", x => x.Length(4001));
The answers above only work for older version of nhibernate.
If you try HasMany(x => x.Answers).Element("Value", x => x.Length(4001)); you will get the following:
Error Property or indexer
'FluentNHibernate.MappingModel.ColumnMapping.Length' cannot be
assigned to -- it is read only
The correct way to do this now is (NHibernate 4.0.2.4, FluentNHibernate 2.0.1.0):
HasMany(m => m.Answers).Element("Value", e => e.Length(4001))
I'm using nHibernate on a webpage for viewing items from an already existing database. I'm having trouble linking two tables together. The two tables share a common column name that I need to cross reference. Granted, I would have designed the tables a little differently to just use a reference ID better but being this is a legacy database, I really need to figure out how to configure my Map to work on the existing schema.
I’m trying to use a HasOne relationship between two tables (I can also see how this could also fit into the ManyToOne) but I just can't seem to get anything to work with the right results...Having exhausted my Google cache I'm now hoping someone might be able to offer some quick insights to what I'm doing wrong.
The first table is called 'Report' which wants to load an object from another table called 'OperatingSystem'; Both share the common field ‘Report_Number’
The Model classes look like this:
public class ReportModel
{
public virtual int Report_Number { get; set; }
public virtual OperatingSystemsModel OperatingSystem { get; set; }
}
public class OperatingSystemsModel
{
public virtual string OS_Name { get; set; }
public virtual int Report_Number { get; set; }
}
*The important difference from the normal situation is that the two records are indexed via the Report_Number rather than the Report having an index into the Operating system.
The table mappings look like this:
public ReportMap()
{
Table("pcd_PROBLEM40");
Id(x => x.Report_Number).Column("Report_Number").GeneratedBy.Native();
HasOne(x => x.OperatingSystem).PropertyRef(x => x.Report_Number).ForeignKey("Report_Number");
}
public OperatingSystemsMap()
{
Table("pcd_os_names");
Id(x => x.Report_Number).Column("Report_Number").GeneratedBy.Native();
Map(x => x.OS_Name);
}
The goal being that the ReportModel’s OperatingSystem object will get populated correctly from the shared Report_number feild.
I’ve tried a variety of combinations of HasOne() with PropertyRef() and ForeignKey() but can’t seem to get one that works.
I keep getting the following exception when I try to get a report.
{"Unknown column 'operatings2_.Report_Number' in 'field list'"}
public static ReportModel GetReport(int i_iReportNumber)
{
ICriteria criteria = Session.CreateCriteria(typeof(ReportModel));
criteria.Add(Restrictions.Eq("Report_Number", i_iReportNumber));
return criteria.UniqueResult<ReportModel>();
}
Any insights would be much, much appreciated!
Try:
HasOne(x => x.OperatingSystem);
Or
HasOne(x => x.OperatingSystem).Constrained();
Also take a look at this post on brunoreis.com for more help on HasOne syntax: